One Square At A Time
by nicelynicelyjohnson
Summary: A talented computer hacker is forced into joining SHIELD in a political move when she finds out a little too much about the Initiative. And that's only the start of her problems. Contains BIG spoilers for Sherlock 2x03 and The Avengers
1. Prologue

**One Square at a Time**

A talented computer hacker is forced into joining SHIELD in a political move when she finds out a little too much about the Initiative. And that's only the start of her problems. (Sherlock BBC crossover)

**Disclaimer:** The Avengers belongs to Marvel. Sherlock belongs to Arthur Conan Doyle and the BBC. Such is life.

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1. Prologue

It was raining heavily, which was no surprise to any Brit. In fact, anyone born and raised in the country would inevitably have in their possession a decent amount of wet weather garb by the time they were twenty four. The winding path behind the retail park was saturated with rain water, puddles growing rapidly in any available dip and pothole. Through the relentless sheets of water trekked a solitary figure under a large black umbrella, head bent against the force of the weather and heading determinedly towards a taller figure with its own umbrella stood halfway along the path, a singular blind spot from the discount shop and fast food joints security cameras.

The taller one, a middle aged man in a wool coat, looked up as he was approached. "Connie." He said as way of greeting.

Connie nodded and stepped forward. A skinny girl in her twenties, she came across as a little more bedraggled compared to the sharply dressed Douglas Fisher. "You better have a good reason for dragging me out here Doug." She said, shaking a little excess water from her umbrella. "This is foul."

"A little ambient noise never hurt anyone." Fisher shrugged. "Less chance of being overheard here, that's all."

"It's more than ambient noise, it's more like ambient drowning." Connie grumbled. "What are you doing here, Doug? Not like you to leave the big smoke on a flying visit."

He paused before admitting, "You're in trouble."

"Uh oh." Despite their relatively normal appearances, Douglas Fisher and Connie Riley were both in one of the more unusual career paths of the United Kingdom.

They were both agents of MI6.

"I wanted to give you a heads up." Fisher quickened his speech. "There's a high chance you won't be around here anymore. SHIELD, of all people, has heard what you can do and they're interested in you. They're very interested." He said that last sentence like it was not a thing to be celebrated.

She smirked. "Am I being head hunted?" Of course she knew of SHIELD. For years the two organisations had had a complicated relationship, engaged in an ongoing dance of mistrust and attempting to be one step ahead.

"No, you're being transferred."

"To the highest bidder."

Fisher sighed tiredly. "Look." He said, attempting to change the subject. "I know you don't like it, but everyone think it's time we got Mycroft involved."

"Mycroft Holmes is nothing to do with this." It was almost a default response now, but nothing could have prepared her for Fisher's reply.

"That's the thing, kid. He _is_ this."

She stared at him. "Holmes is government work. He's nothing to do with SHIELD."

Fisher shifted uncomfortably. "There have been...developments. Besides, you don't have a say in this."

"Of course." She snorted derisively. "I don't get a say, you just point me in the right direction, tell me what I'm looking for and say don't come back until it's done."

"You're not an idiot, Con." Fisher said with a start, his patient demeanour instantly vanishing. "You're a good hacker but you're not good enough to cover your tracks at HQ."

"What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about Stark Industries. The New Mexico incident. The Super Soldier Project." He reeled off the names in a familiar tone, growing steadily more irate. "_The Tesseract_, Connie that was level five stuff, for God's sake!"

"So?" She muttered guiltily.

"So!" He snapped. "So, it was not for you to flick through at your leisure for a little light reading!" He sighed again, "This is the sort of stunt that led us to recruiting you, remember that? God knows what SHIELD are going to think."

He paused and Connie couldn't help but feel sorry for the man. When she had been recruited to MI6 as a computer hacker six years ago, he had been somewhat of a mentor, showing her the ropes and keeping her out of trouble. But Connie was curious, she always had been, and when browsing the government database one night, she had encountered all kind of suspicious activity. Ghost files, locked files that not even her high up acquaintances were aware of. She'd seen them as a challenge and after a lot of work had managed to break in, to find...

Well. She'd definitely found something interesting. If she didn't know better, she would have declared it all fiction, files on individuals with lives straight out of a story book. Then, barely a week later, New York City had been devastated by a vicious alien attack, the likes of which had never been witnessed on such a scale. But they had been defeated, and rumours her side of the Atlantic had flown thick and fast about an elite group, superheroes of all things...

It was frankly ridiculous, and with the world and its conflicts in a dangerous state of flux, Connie had disregarded the files as an outdated fallacy. Now they were getting Mycroft Holmes involved, she wasn't so sure.

"What are the 'developments'?" She asked quietly.

Reaching into his pocket, Fisher drew out a folded newspaper page and handed it to Connie. She unfurled the crumpled sheet to reveal a headline 'SHAMED REICHENBACH HERO TAKES OWN LIFE'. Underneath was a photograph of a man with high cheekbones and dark hair, turning his face away from camera with a high collared coat and somewhat bizarre deerstalker hat.

"Sherlock Holmes. Mycroft's little brother. He is the development."

"The Reichenbach hero?"

"One of the greatest minds of our time. Dead after chucking himself off the top of St. Bart's. Now that report says he was a fraud, staged all his brilliant deductions, but we think otherwise."

"Because of Mycroft." She finished with a frown.

"Because of many, many things." Fisher replied. "Yes, Mycroft had a say, but he should, he's had his own brother under surveillance for nearly a decade." He glanced back over one shoulder and then, confirming they were alone, added; "It was thought that up until the fraud allegations...SHEILD were very interested in Sherlock."

Connie looked up at her mentor. She couldn't deny it, Stevens' uncharacteristically anxious and jumpy behaviour unnerved her, and then she put it together.

"You're not meant to be here, are you."

His mouth was set in a grim line. "No. But I wanted to come and warn you, Connie. Because there are a lot of things that are about to happen to you and some you are not going to understand, believe me, I don't understand them myself. This is a world that we are not familiar with that we're getting involved in here. Too long has SHIELD kept its true face under wraps, but what with the recent events in New York...we can't afford to ignore that any longer. Who's to say the next attack won't be on London?"

She looked at him. "Do you think..."

He shrugged helplessly and took the paper back. "I honestly don't know."

"So what, am I consolation prize? They can't have Holmes but they can have me? I'm a hacker, Holmes was a consulting detective, we're completely different entities..."

He shook his head. "Between you and me, I think in the long run they wanted both of you. Now listen to me. You're to help SHIELD, not hinder them. In any way they need. And in the mean time, you are to keep your eyes and ears open, you must notice everything because we may, MAY need it at some point."

Connie nodded, all notion of joking forgotten. "I understand. Anymore advice?"

"Stay alive, Con." He muttered. "I won't be able to protect you over there." He sniffed and took a step back, curtailing the conversation. Connie wasn't surprised at the brief break away. Stevens had never been one for sentiment.

"You should get the call tonight." He added as way of a goodbye. "Try to get the first train in tomorrow."

"It'll be packed with commuters." She grumbled.

A ghost of a smile tugged at the corner of Fisher's mouth. "Should have thought about that before you hacked into the Tesseract file." He turned and began to pace back down the path.

"Is it true?" She called out before she could stop herself and then dropped her voice as Stevens turned.

"What it said in the New Mexico file...those two guys...they were gods?"

"Demi-gods. Norse, to be exact." Stevens replied after a short pause. "If you can believe it. I'd advise you to get used to this sort of thing, it's going to happen a lot if SHIELD get involved."

"What will?" She shouted after him.

"The unbelievable!" He shouted back and then he was gone.

And the rain continued to pour.


	2. En Passant

**Disclaimer:** Still own sod all.

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2. En Passant

As Stevens had predicted, the call came, frank, formal and impersonal late that evening and the next day Connie had dressed smartly for once, before making her way into the capital. A meeting, the message had said, with General Director Thompson and 'other persons of note'. She'd tried not to groan, since 'people of note' usually involved one Mycroft Holmes. A powerful figure in the British government, Holmes did not have a winning personality and in her few meetings with him, Connie had found him patronising and sly. Holmes was a skilled liar, but Connie found the trait even more unnerving.

Battling her way through tourists and commuters alike, she eventually reached HQ and pulled her security pass from her pocket to enter the building. Fisher was waiting for her in the foyer looking nervous and wordlessly, he led her up for the fifth floor and into a simply decorated conference room.

She was not the first to arrive and recognised a few of her fellow agents milling around and talking. Two junior agents would stand on the doors to prevent interruption and they were ready to get into place.

At one end of the table was Mycroft Holmes, dressed in a spotless suit. A long umbrella was propped against the edge of the table and a cup of tea on a saucer sat before him on the shining table top. Next to the door behind him stood one of the junior agents, a man called Alton, who was eyeing the umbrella with a look of serious unease.

She had barely had time to gather her thoughts when Connie's superior walked in, followed by three strangers. "Everyone." He only needed to speak once to command total silence. "Before we begin, some introductions need to be made. I'm sure many of you already know or know of Mr Mycroft Holmes-" Mycroft inclined his head in acknowledgement and elegantly sipped his tea. "And from Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division, we have director Nick Fury, Agent Maria Hill and Agent Clint Barton."

Connie turned to look at the newcomers. Whilst Hill and Barton was dressed in fairly normal looking attire, their jackets featuring what she recognised as the SHIELD logo, Fury was something else. Tall and formidable looking, he wore a long black coat as well as a black patch over one eye, and was essentially the polar opposite to Mycroft's collected ensemble. Thompson shook hands with Fury and everyone took their seats. As well as the three SHIELD operatives, Mycroft and Thompson, the meeting was attended by three top ranking MI6 agents, Fisher and the two junior agents on the door.

"Before we begin," Thompson continued. "Let the records show that everyone in this room has been fully briefed on the Avengers Initiative and all related projects. They are the only people that have been privy to such information and have sworn under oath to take it no further." He opened the ring binder file in front of him and cleared his throat. "Now we are dealing with the case of Miss Constance Joanne Riley." He glanced at her. "Agent Riley. You have been detected hacking into MI6's own top secret files under no superior instruction. Can you explain this?"

She swallowed once before she spoke, feeling under scrutiny from everyone in the room. "With all due respect sir, I only went looking for the answers I wasn't being given."

"And for good reason." Thompson replied firmly. "That information was level five confidentiality."

"You hired me to help detect threats to our security." She argued. "I can't do that if I'm not being given the information. If this..._Loki_ character," She tried not to notice Fury look up suddenly at her mention of the demi-god. "If he attempted to infiltrate the British defence systems, we would not know what we were looking for until it was too late."

"Loki is no longer a threat." Agent Barton replied. "He was returned to Asgard to face the judgment of his own people."

"His own people." Mycroft echoed sarcastically. "His family. Yes I'm sure any justice they deliver will be swift and deserved..."

"Loki is not innocent in his own world." Fury stated. "And the Asgardians have capabilities far beyond ours for controlling him."

"But how do you know?" It was out before Connie could stop herself and she felt herself blush as the three SHIELD agents stared at her. "I mean, have they tried keeping him captive before? And if he managed to slip between worlds unchecked once, who's to say he won't do it again? Or someone else even bigger and badder?"

"How old are you, Riley?" Mycroft asked out of the blue. "Nineteen? My God, Mi6 are starting them younger and younger these days."

"I'm twenty four, _sir_." She muttered.

"And tell me, how would you like to live to see twenty five?" the words slipped out so casually, it took the inhabitants of the room a moment to comprehend it.

"Mr Holmes, we are not here to threaten anyone," Fury began.

"Which I'm sure is why you and your accomplices are armed to the teeth." Mycroft replied smoothly. "Oh, don't think we hadn't noticed."

"So you decided to play dumb to lure us in." Agent Barton commented dangerously. The tension in the room suddenly became more apparent. Even Alton was concentrating now.

Mycroft smirked. "Believe me, it wasn't a stretch, with most Americans I don't even have to try."

"GENTLEMEN." Thompson cut in fluidly. "Can we keep things civil for five minutes?"

"This is why I don't like working with Holmes." Connie muttered to Fisher, who smothered a smile as Barton and Hill relaxed back into their chairs.

"Agent Riley knows too much for us to let her continue here." Fury commented. "She also has a skills set we feel would be...useful, to SHIELD."

"Skills set?" Stevens chuckled. "She's the best. She hacked into MI6."

"I agree. In fact, I think the transfer of Agent Riley could be a good thing." Thompson announced. "Director Fury, it's no secret that links between our organisations have been...shaky at best. Perhaps this move could begin to solidify them."

"How would we know she wasn't just feeding you information?" Agent Hill asked.

"She could submit any reports to you first for approval. Nothing under the table, I assure you."

"Although this wouldn't be the first time you've taken a look into our business." Fury added thoughtfully. "One of our agents met a very interesting young intern at Stark Industries going under two names. One of those names was Ash Carstairs."

There was a short pause before Mycroft spoke. "Well, this is very awkward." He announced. "You've met dear Agent Carstairs then?"

Fury nodded.

"And, ah...what has become of him?"

Without his facial expression changing an inch, Fury replied; "He was head hunted."

At the door, Agent Alton turned a spluttered statement of 'That little shit!' into a coughing fit. Mycroft Holmes merely sipped his tea calmly.

"What is it to be then?" He asked. "You know what's on the table. A computer hacker who knows all your dirty little secrets." He continued disdainfully. "About the technicalities of Tony Stark's vanity projects and Captain America, a children's comic character!"

After a short pause, Fury asked; "Why now?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Why are you so interested in making this official now? Do you need us on your side? You in some sort of trouble?"

There was a long dread-filled silence before anyone spoke again.

"Yes." Mycroft admitted, in a voice quite unlike his usual smooth tones. "We are in trouble." He turned to Connie. "Constance, have you ever heard of a man called Sebastian Moran?"

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Reviews make new Avengers! Or something...


	3. The Spider and the Fly

**3. The Spider and the Fly**

"Constance, have you ever heard of a man called Sebastian Moran?"

Next to her, Connie felt Fisher immediately tense. "No." She replied cluelessly, bewildered at the sudden change in her mentor's temperament.

Mycroft nodded slowly. "I thought as much, since technically...he doesn't exist."

"Neither does the God of Thunder." Barton remarked to nobody in particular.

"Hold on - How could she have heard of someone who doesn't exist?" Agent Hill asked, before anyone in the room could question the baffling statement.

"Totally possible," Connie muttered "We'd have something in common."

"Right now, Moran is one of the most dangerous men in Britain-" Mycroft began.

"Moran was a SHIELD agent." Fury announced, out of the blue. Judging by Barton and Hill's reactions, this was a surprise to them too. "Until we recruited Agent Barton, Moran was one of our best snipers. Ex-army, ex-SAS..."

"Moran was dishonourably discharged." Mycroft said through gritted teeth. "That should have been a warning sign."

"We all have red in our ledgers, Mr Holmes." Fury replied in a low voice and Connie couldn't help but notice Barton uncomfortably shift slightly in his seat. "Even you. Some of us however, intend to wipe it out."

"Even me?" Mycroft raised an eyebrow, amused. "You seem very sure about-"

"How's your brother?" Barton cut in suddenly.

At that final comment, Director Thompson leapt swiftly to his feet. "I think we should take a break." He said loudly and pointedly, in order to drown out any response Mycroft may have supplied. "Let's say...fifteen minutes. Everyone get some air, get some water, get OUT of each other's faces and we'll start again at twenty past. Agreed?" There was something in his 'agreed' that insinuated that any form of disagreement was not an available option.

The inhabitants of the room quickly scattered to attend to their respective needs and Mycroft immediately returned his Blackberry close to his ear, deep in whispered conversation a little way away from the others.

Connie saw Fisher looking at her with a frown. "Con..." He began in concern, but she shook her head and walked off, quickly catching up with Agent Alton who was heading towards a nearby drinks machine.

"How are you feeling?" He asked her as she fell into step.

Connie leant heavily against the wall and gave him a resigned look. "...You know that scene in 'Die Another Day' where James Bond walks over the bridge in exchange for the bad guy's prisoner?"

He nodded, smiling. "Yeah." He retrieved a can of coke from the machine and cracked it open, taking a long swig.

Connie shrugged "Well it's kind of like that. Except there's nobody walking towards me. It's a one-way exchange with all guns pointed at me."

"Yeah, but if I remember right, Bond was going home in that scene." He frowned thoughtfully and suppressed a burp. "Or was that 'Casino Royale'?"

"It's not that." Connie sighed. "It's not the whole future-in-the-balance thing, I don't even care about that. It's the fact I feel like I'm being fought over like a scrap of meat for no reason. Everyone's bringing their grudges to the table, the atmosphere in there's pure poison."

"We've never fully trusted SHIELD, you know that." Alton replied awkwardly. "Not even the CIA trusts them. They've got their own agenda, they're a complete wildcard."

"They saved the world from Loki."

He shrugged, torn. "Yeah, but Riley, hundreds of people in New York died in the process. Look, what SHIELD do...I agree that you can't argue with their results, but their methods are more than questionable."

Connie sighed again deeply. She wasn't used to these big meetings, more accustomed to remote hacking and submitting data in a report to someone far better at talking than she was. "Do you think I should go?"

Alton grinned. "I can't tell you what to do."

She rolled her eyes. "Deeply helpful, cheers for that."

"No I honestly can't. Not my place. Thompson would kill me." He glanced back down the corridor and added in a whisper. "I just think that maybe...you should follow your own agenda. Not MI6's. Not SHIELD's. Yours." He paused. "I'm really glad Ash is still alive though. I really thought we'd lost him there."

Connie smiled weakly as they made their way back towards the conference room. Mycroft had returned and now he and Thompson were stood talking, another file laid open on the table.

"Seb Moran." Fisher growled softly, spotting Connie trying to peek at the black and white photo inside the file.

"You know him?"

"Know OF him. Did half my training with the SAS back in the day. God knows why they let him in, he was unhinged from the start."

"So where's he been? Since leaving SHIELD, I mean."

Fisher sat down and Connie retook her seat beside him once more. "Not sure. SHIELD will have helpfully taught him a whole new bag of tricks, that's certain. Last intelligence we got was that he'd teamed up with James Moriarty."

"But Moriarty's dead." Connie ventured.

He nodded. "That's the kicker. Intel says the two were close. How close and what nature of close, who can say, but the death of Moriarty can only mean bad news for Moran's mental state." He sighed and looked at the table top. "I can only assume that right now, Moran is a man who has nothing left to lose. And they're the most dangerous type to have around."

Connie let the words sink in as Thompson clapped his hands and called for everyone to come back in.

"Agent Riley. Have you come to a decision?"

She bit her lip thoughtfully. "If..." she began, before looking at Fury. "If I don't go with you...What will be the consequences of that?"

Fury gestured vaguely. "We will withdraw from the UK and Ireland. We will no longer interfere in any of your missions. But if you ever need us, or any of the Avengers, we will not come. We will not assist you."

An outbreak of protest from the British population of the room exploded. "That's completely unfair!" Fisher argued over the hubbub.

"Agent Stevens!" Thompson ordered angrily. "Everyone! That's enough. I will have order in here."

"Your conditions are unreasonable." Fisher hissed, ignoring his superior.

"Your agent breaking into the Tesseract file and leaving it wide open was unreasonable!" Fury replied.

Connie winced. Fury had a point. She nodded slowly and her action brought a hush to the table. "Then I suppose I have no choice." She admitted. "Fine. I'll join SHIELD. I'll go."

Out of the corner of her eye, she could have sworn Mycroft smiled. "Very well." He said curtly. "We will make the necessary arrangements. You shall leave tomorrow."

She jumped at the suddenness of the situation. "Tomorrow?"

Mycroft got to his feet. "It's only a day away." He remarked before sweeping out of the room, umbrella in hand.

Nick Fury crossed the room and shook a dazed Connie's hand. "Welcome to the team Agent Riley."

"...Thanks?" She mumbled.

Fury turned back to Agent Hill. "We're done here." He nodded to the other man. "Director Thompson."

"Director Fury." Thompson replied amicably. The agents began to file out of the room, the three Americans discussing something at top speed as they walked away. Thompson glanced up and smiled at one of the agents at the door, a solemn faced man.

"Director," He called down the corridor. Fury turned. "You've left your man here."

"Our man?" Fury frowned in confusion. "He's not our man. I thought he was one of yours."

Connie looked up slowly from the table as the realisation set in. "Oh my god..."

For a moment, all was confusion. Then the mystery man sprang forward, grabbing the two files, on the Avenger Initiative and Moran, and pulling a handgun from inside his jacket, swept it around the room.

"Go on then!" He yelled tauntingly at the tentatively advancing agents. "Who's first?"

"Get those files!" Thompson cried, before the man let off three shots. Two missed, shot wildly, but one caught an MI6 agent in the arm and he stumbled back. Flinging the door open, the intruder sprinted down the corridor, shoving aside anyone in his path and firing randomly back the way he'd come.

"Get down!" Fury yelled a warning, before pulling out his own handgun and aiming for the thief. He'd barely fired three shots however before the thief turned the corner and vanished.

They all gave chase, agents retrieving their weapons and shouting instructions to each other. Ahead, the lift doors slid shut with the intruder inside. Through the slice of open door however, they all spotted one thing – a hostage, an arm wrapped around her neck.

"The stairs, the stairs!" Echoed a dozen different voices as the lift began to descend, followed by the stampeding of feet towards the stairwell.

Connie was about to follow when Agent Barton roughly grabbed her arm.

"How do we get to the roof?" He barked.

"What?"

"The roof, there's a door up there; I saw it when we arrived, how do I get up there?"

"I know the way." Alton commented. "Follow me sir." He raced off in the opposite direction, Barton and Connie close behind him after Hill handed Barton a silver briefcase. Barrelling through a fire door, Alton led the way up a steep set of plain concrete stairs, up and up until finally they burst out into the bright morning sunlight. The two MI6 agents raced to the edge of the windswept rooftop, surrounded by a waist high wall.

"Is he out yet?" Barton yelled to them.

"I can't see him." Connie replied and turned to see the briefcase open on the floor. Agent Barton was walking purposely towards them, holding a high-tech looking long bow and a small quiver of sleek black arrows.

"How the hell did you get that into the building?" Alton yelped at the sight of the weaponry.

"I have a friend." Was Barton's simple reply.

"There he is." She heard Alton gulp, and Connie spun back to see their intruder pelting down the road towards the river. Agents were on his tail, but a good hundred yards behind him and losing ground all the time.

"You won't get him now." Alton groaned, out of breath from the race to the rooftop. "He's too far gone."

Barton raised the bow. "You clearly," he said, loading an arrow, "Haven't read my file." He steadied his aim and Connie watched doubtfully, as the intruder grew smaller and smaller, to a speck down on the street.

"You can't get a clear shot." She tried, cautiously. "There's too many tourists down there, you'll hit someone..." She was hushed by Agent Hill who had now joined them, but Barton appeared to not have heard. Stock still, with the bow-string drawn tight, he could have been completely alone on that rooftop for all the heed he paid them. Connie ached to do something, to stop this _madman_ – there were children down there running about, right into the line of fire -

Then suddenly, the arrow was gone, whistling through the air, past wires and signs and people, faster, faster than Connie could keep an eye on it until – silently, it caught the intruder in the back of the shoulder, a non-fatal blow, the force of it knocking him to the ground.

Barton smirked and lowered the bow as three MI6 agents and a police officer leapt onto the prone man. He glanced sideways at Alton and Connie, who stood dumbstruck, mouths agape, nodded to the both of them before walking back inside.

"There's a reason they call him Hawkeye, you know." Agent Hill commented, holding the door open for them. "Shall we?"

From the tinted window of his car, Mycroft Holmes watched intently as the man was dragged back to MI6 HQ.

"Impressive, Mr Barton." He commented quietly, turning his attention back to his Blackberry. "Most impressive." Next time, perhaps, Mycroft wouldn't make it so easy...


	4. The Point of No Return

4. The Point of No Return

"Shouldn't you be gone by now?"

"When you work for the government, you can be as late as you like for your own flight." Connie looked up from the screen in front of her and smiled at Alton. It was the next day and down in the foyer sat two suitcases of clothes and equipment. "I was just doing some last minute research on Moran. He went to Oxford, can you believe it."

"Do Oxbridge have a history of turning out lunatics then?" Alton asked with a smirk.

"Where did you go?"

"Bristol."

"Well there you go then." Connie remarked, clicking on a file that brought up a grainy and obviously old photo of Moran. He was tall and long limbed, with a heavy brow and hollow cheeks highlighting some, admittedly great, cheekbones, his strong jaw covered in stubble. His eyes could not be clearly seen, but his hair was dark and combed back from his face. "You'll let me know if there's any sighting, won't you?"

Alton nodded. "Of course. You worried about him?"

"Mycroft seemed to be. And if Mycroft's worried then that doesn't bode well at all.

Alton paused and inspected the photo on screen before asking; "Where did you go?"

Another pause before Connie, with a sudden movement, hit the 'x' on the screen. The image of Moran vanished in an instant and the girl quickly pulled the USB from its port, shoving it roughly into her pocket.

"I'm going to be late." She muttered, pulling her bag onto her shoulder. "No point putting it off anymore."

She and Alton walked in silence to the lift and waited for the door to open.

"Good luck Riley." Alton blurted out reluctantly.

"Thanks." The doors opened and she stepped inside. The point of no return. "I'll tell Carstairs you said hi." She quipped, pressing the button for the ground floor.

She heard him cackling as the lift doors slid shut. "That little _shit!"_

* * *

"Can you stop here?"

The driver raised an eyebrow. "Here?"

"Just for five minutes." She glanced out of the window at the normal-looking London street. She was sure this was the place. With a irate grunt, the driver pulled over and switched off the engine.

She stepped gingerly out of the car, regarding the grey, overcast sky with suspicion and then turned to inspect the door in front of her. Black and solid looking, with the flat number spelled out in discoloured metal letters. Underneath was an equally aged doorknocker, a device she usually ignored in favour of the traditional method of banging a fist on the door.

Number 221...B. This was the place alright. The street with the cafe on her right, the black metal railings encircling each building, the tall brick structures themselves... Yes, this was the place. Nerves began to flicker at the pit of her stomach as she climbed the step towards the door. She had started out from HQ so determined, so set in her sideline personal mission, but now, she wasn't so sure.

She paused, knuckles raised, ready to knock, but something, some feeling, held her back. With an annoyed huff, she turned away and trotted back across the pavement. As her hand found contact with the car door, there was a click behind her of a door unlocking and she turned back in time to see the door being swung open.

The man at the door stared at her. "What do you want?"

She gulped. It was John Watson. The same sandy hair and stocky build. But this was a John Watson a million miles from any image that MI6 had on file of him. He hadn't shaved for at least a day. His eyes were ringed with dark circles, and he had the air of a man who is holding it together for all the wrong reasons.

"I just..." She shrugged helplessly. She hadn't planned this meeting, hadn't speculated how things would happen. Once again it was her damn curious nature getting the better of her. _I wanted to see if you were real. If you were more than a file, a rumour, a line in a newspaper, a grainy snapshot from a security camera on the side of a supermarket. I wanted to prove to myself that you were a living, breathing man and that you, and by proxy, Sherlock Holmes, existed._ "I wondered if you could help me."

He shook his head immediately. "No. I don't do that sort of thing anymore. I'm sorry." It came out rehearsed and stale and insincere and as he shut the door purposely in her face, she realised that just maybe she wasn't the first to come looking.

* * *

When, and if, anyone enquired to the nature of the late flight, they would have been assured calmly that it was all just a routine maintenance check on the engines, all scheduled, but one that had happened to, unfortunately, overrun just a little. So no eyebrows were raised when one final passenger joined them, a young woman with a heavy carry-on.

As she settled into her seat, Connie idly wondered how many of the perfectly normal looking travellers on her flight were actually secret servicemen or SHIELD agents, just there to make sure she didn't try to run. Not that she intended to. Years of working solely on the more technical aspects hadn't left much time for her to train herself for any marathons. She'd seen other agents, the ones who went out into the field, with the bodies of Olympians and she felt rather chubby and insignificant beside them. Back in her own department however, her worries were soon forgotten. She liked her colleagues, but describing them as 'nerds' would be the kindest term. It suddenly struck her, as the pilot apologised for and announced their late take off, that she hadn't had the chance to say goodbye to any of them. It had been less than twenty four hours since her fate had been decided around a conference table, a meeting rounded off with the unexpected chase, and those hours had been filled with other priorities. In a last act of childish defiance, she had placed the Avenger files and the Tesseract files, along with anything you can find on Moriarty and Moran onto a back up drive and shoved in deep in a suitcase, just in case she wanted to take another look.

Despite Fisher influence and the disdain for any sort of sentimentality, it was a lot to abandon a group she had worked with for the past six years without as much as a goodbye. Perhaps Alton would tell them what had happened. Or Fisher. She hoped so anyway, despite the creeping doubt that any information about her sudden departure reaching the technicians was unlikely.

The plane picked up speed and noise and gradually, gradually parted ways with the ground. Connie took a deep breath as her stomach lurched uncomfortably. Flying never usually made her nervous. But then, she usually knew what kind of situation she would be getting into when she landed.

Perhaps she had been wrong. Perhaps this was the real point of no return.

* * *

**Hello!** **I've noticed a lot of you have been adding me to your story alerts/favourites, which is quite lovely and I am very flattered. Thank you all. We should talk though. Seriously. Drop me a line. I'm a fairly nice person. I've got most of my teeth and can write those new fangled 'word' things... **

**I'm not sure why I told you about the teeth.**


	5. Scattered

5. Scattered

Agent Barton was waiting to meet her at JFK. Well, she assumed he had been waiting, as the moment she stepped out of the departures gate, he appeared seemingly out of nowhere by her side and grabbed her upper arm none too gently to guide her along.

"Miss Riley." He muttered as way of greeting.

"Well hello to you too." She replied, wondering why they'd sent Barton out of everyone. Then she remembered the intruder, taken out with a single arrow from a fifteenth storey rooftop in the middle of a crowded street. Yeah. That would explain it.

Barton led her purposefully through the masses and out of the airport to a waiting car. Their journey through New York was silent, awkwardly so. She glanced out the window a few times to see a New York she wasn't at all used to – a New York under construction. The battle she'd read up on between The Avengers and the alien force had not been without its casualties and she couldn't help but recall Agent Alton's words. _Their methods are questionable..._

She looked back at Barton who was sat across from her, staring out of the opposite window. Dark glasses masked his eyes and it was difficult to tell what he was feeling. Her attention was drawn to a sudden, movement and she shifted her gaze to where his left hand lay on his knee, the thumb running constantly over the two first fingers, subconsciously, as if looking for something to fill the gap. She had seen a similar action on agents returning from firearms training, their grasp becoming accustomed to cold metal of the weaponry. Something missing. Those first two fingers wrapped around a bowstring.

"We're here."

Connie started. She hadn't noticed the car slowing to a halt and the two words snapped her from her reverie. Without even waiting, Barton got out of the car and shut the door.

She turned to the driver. "Charmer, isn't he?" She quipped, not bothering to wait for a response before wiggling out of the backseat to retrieve her cases.

* * *

Agent Barton had seemingly abandoned her after they'd walked through the entrance of SHIELD's New York base. A fairly unremarkable battered wooden door had actually been made of six inch thick reinforced metal, opened only by the Agents security pass. Inside, the plain brick building, shoved as an afterthought on a run-down block, was a labyrinth of hallways and rooms, all sealed off to Connie as she awaited further instruction. Now she was awkwardly loitering in a cold, bare hallway, trying to shake the heavy feeling of fatigue and nerves. She was alone and it was quiet. Somewhere, either far below or on a floor high above a constant hum of some sort of machinery purred away like a great engine.

Above that, she was sure she could hear voices. Edging closer to the nearest door she realised some kind of meeting was taking place. She strained her ears to hear the familiar voice of Nick Fury reeling off some kind of list of people.

"...So we have the morgue attendant, the inspector, the housekeeper-"

"Landlady." A quieter voice cut in.

A pause.

"What?"

"She's...she's the landlady." The voice paused and coughed nervously. "She's not their housekeeper."

"...The _landlady_ then." Fury replied, with slightly less patience. "Have you checked again? Is there truly nobody else who can give us anything..."

"Sir. There is...her."

"And again Agent, I say no. It has been established that she'll never work for us."

"We could convince her." A new voice piped up that Connie immediately recognised as Agent Carstairs. "You've got me, and from what I heard you've now got Riley as well. You've got that link now. What's to stop us selling her back to the British government?"

"No solid proof, no tracking, no idea of her general location, no sightings of her for the past three months..." Fury reeled off.

"Agent Riley?"

Connie started at the sudden interruption. Agent Hill had approached her whilst she eavesdropped. "I wasn't...I, um..." She stammered foolishly.

Hill rolled her eyes and beckoned for Connie to follow her. "Come with me please." She followed Hill down a long brightly lid hallway into a smaller room containing a desk, a chair and a computer with a long cable trailing from the USB port across the floor and into a larger console.

"We're just going to put you through a couple of tests." Agent Hill explained, motioning for Connie to sit down, which she did with some trepidation.

"What do I have to do?"

"What you apparently do best." Hill replied. "Just get into the database and keep locating your file. Every time you do, it'll go deeper into the system, into a new security set. It'll lock you back out and you'll have to find another way in. Can you do that?"

She nodded. "Sure. When the front door's barred, just go in the back. Or the window. Whichever works. How much time do I have?"

Hill shrugged. "Clock starts when you do."

Connie flexed her fingers, tucked her hair behind her ears and drew the chair up to the table. "Alright. Let's do this."

* * *

The first time she had found the file ('CJRiley – 3210') had been so easy she had almost laughed out loud. Then before she could move to select the file, it was gone again, she was returned to the home screen with an error message locking her out. Frowning, she pushed her hair absently out of her face and started again. The minutes ticked past and she soon became oblivious to time passing at all, to Hill looming over her shoulder every now and then, to the growing ache in her fingers. Connie had a way of disconnecting from outside elements when she was working; a way to focus all her attention on the task in hand, which sometimes came in useful. Out in the field however, she had to force herself to keep an ear out for danger. At least in the tiny lab she sat in now she could relinquish all connection with her environment with confidence.

She pulled up page after page, writing and rewriting codes. The tests got more and more challenging, until she was confronted with the same difficulties she found when hacking into the Tesseract file. _Level five stuff._

Then all of a sudden, she found herself hitting a wall. A virtual wall. Nope. Not going any further. She paused. Not possible. She'd found a way in every time before. She pulled up another page of code and started scanning it rapidly, looking for a glitch, an anomaly, anything...

"Stop."

"No."

"I said, stop!" Hill repeated.

"I can get in there!" Connie argued.

"You've been on that same security level for nearly half an hour." Agent Hill insisted. "If this was a field situation, you'd have been discovered by now."

"But I can do it, I _know _I can!"

"It doesn't matter!" Hill snapped and then returned to her calmer state. "This was as much a test of our security as it was your skills. Now we know how we'll have to reformat everything to stop any breaches. What you've done has been a great help." This last statement was not delivered convincingly.

Connie slumped down in her chair. "I could have done it." She muttered childishly.

Hill ignored her. "Come with me. I'll take you to your room."

Casting one final wistful look at the computer screen, Connie got to her feet and followed the other woman back through the maze of corridors. Artificial light filtered down on them, as every window was blocked up. Connie wondered briefly how much time had passed since she had arrived. Had night fallen yet? She felt tired, but for all she knew that could have been jet lag or stress. Or both.

The room was basic, but clean. The furniture consisted of a small single bed with a unit beside it, a chair at an empty desk and several storage compartments. A door in the wall led to a tiny bathroom. Everything was sharp lines and sterile anonymity, suggesting that the room had never been occupied by one person for more than a few days at a time.

Opening one of the compartment doors, she found her belongings had already been taken from their cases and were now folded or hanging neatly inside, alongside standard issue SHIELD uniform inscribed with the number - 3210.

"It's only temporary." Hill announced as Connie shut the door again. She looked around.

"Temporary?"

"It's pretty likely we'll be on the move again soon." Hill explained. "The attack at MI6 could have been some sort of a warning of things to come, so the sooner we can become mobile the better."

"And what do I do?"

"When we get the chance, you utilise your skills to see if you can track down Moran. He's not our top priority but we'd feel more confident if we at least knew where he was. For now however, you keep your head down and your nose clean."

Connie nodded towards a blocked window. "Can I go take a look around?"

Hill paused for a moment. "Not yet. You should get some rest."

Connie took this as 'you should let us keep an eye on you', but she nodded obediently and was finally left alone. The second Hill was gone, she retrieved her laptop and hit the power button, intent on emailing Fisher with the events of the day.

_Internet Status: No connections available._

She sighed. Perhaps she should have expected that - although she wasn't, she realised, particularly surprised. There had to be internet available, this deep into New York at least. Just not available to her. Feeling more than a little redundant, she shoved the machine back onto the desk and kicked off her shoes. To hell with trying to stay useful. Her head ached and she was exhausted.

* * *

"We think Lestrade may be more cooperative when faced with a beautiful woman."

The woman, a small redhead, wrinkled her nose in disdain. "I am not going t-"

Fury held up a hand to silence her, noticing Connie's presence at the door. She'd been woken from her sleep by a knock at the door. Another SHIELD agent, with the message that Fury had wanted to speak to her. Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, she'd followed, still in awe at how the agents in residence navigated their way so easily through the seemingly endless passages of the building.

The door to the office had been open now she felt foolish for blundering in. She looked at the hand raised to knock and turned it into a sheepish wave. "You rang?"

Recovering instantly, Fury nodded to the newcomer. "Agent Riley, this is Natasha Romanoff. Agent Romanoff, Constance Riley."

"Connie – please." She held out a hand to the agent. "Constance makes me sound like I should be some kind of nun or something."

"Wouldn't call yourself a saint then, Agent Riley?" Romanoff remarked, dropping the hand after a brief shake. There was strength in that handshake, and a warning. An evaluation, and Connie was instantly transported back to comparing herself against her Olympian co-workers and feeling instantly inferior.

"Nope." She replied and looked back at Fury. "I heard you wanted to speak to me."

Fury nodded. "We just received a call from your previous employer concerning our uninvited guest at the meeting. They took him in for questioning after you left."

"Well they couldn't get much from him, just a name but it was a start. His name's Ronald Adair. Permanent record's full of all kinds of petty crime, vandalism, one or two involvements in embezzlement..."

"And now he can add breaking into MI6 to that little resume." Agent Romanoff added, having not left the room.

"Six months ago he was spotted in the company of one Sebastian Moran." Fury continued. "So I think we can safely assume that Moran knows your friends in MI6 are looking for him."

Connie nodded slowly. "So where's Adair now?"

"In MI6 custody, at a secure unit. He's not going anywhere. But his link to Moran is why I called you in here. We know you've only been here less than twenty four hours, but we'd like to put you to work as soon as possible."

Connie shrugged. "Great. I want to keep busy."

"There's a lab on the sixth floor where you can set up anything you need." Fury explained. "We have links to every country – just do what you can to track down Moran."

"Even if you isolate it down to a country, that's a start."Agent Romanoff added. "Can you do that?"

Connie turned and looked at her. "Of course. I'm going to need one more thing though."

"Name it." Fury replied.

"An internet connection."

* * *

It was late, but these days Molly Hooper didn't have a lot of social engagements to rush off to. Right now it was just her and her cat Toby, and unlike any stupid man, he didn't bombard her with inane questions whenever she got home in the small hours. _Where have you been? Who were you with? Were you with this Sherlock bloke?_ When she told Toby the truth, that she'd been at the morgue and there was loads of work to do and maybe she had done one _tiny_ favour for Sherlock, but just because he asked and it was really no problem, at least Toby didn't argue. He just purred and pushed against her hand and seemed pleased to see her. At least someone was.

"Molly Hooper?"

She jumped. She'd been doing that a lot recently, but ever since...Sherlock, not a lot of people came into the morgue at, she glanced quickly at her watch, half past ten on a Friday night.

She glanced up cautiously at the man lounging in the doorway. He didn't look like the usual morgue visitors either, dressed in scruffy jeans and a worn AC/DC t-shirt. His dark hair was artfully messy and the five o'clock shadow that blurred the edges of his neatly shaped facial hair betrayed the fact he'd been travelling or at least incredibly busy.

"Can I help you?" She asked.

The man seemed to wander across the morgue, looking at various things with an air of casual interest. There was something very familiar about him, but Molly couldn't put a name to the face. "Uh, yes, as a matter of fact you probably can, although looking at your line of work I think I'd prefer to be, you know." He raised his eyebrows at the corpse on the slab. "Dead first." He looked up. "You are Molly Hooper though, right?"

She squinted at him. "Yeah."

He grinned. "Pleasure to meet you. I'm Tony Stark."


End file.
